Blessings Poured Out from Eternity Past (Ephesians 1:3-6)
In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the heavens and the earth were a place of blessing. Three times throughout Genesis does God pronounce a blessing on his creation. He blesses the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and bids them to be fruitful and multiply. He blesses mankind, made in his image, and bids them also to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth, as well as to rule over creation, to subdue it, to have dominion over it. And he blesses the seventh day and makes it holy—a seventh day without evening or morning; a seventh day which was to be an eternal state of constant blessing.
Then man sinned. He rebelled against God by disobeying his command, “You shall not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.” They ate. And following their sin is a three-fold curse. “Cursed is the ground because of you” (Gen 3:17). So also, Cain, the first seed of the woman, was “cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand” (Gen 4:11). So also, Noah said, “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers” (Gen 9:25).
But beyond that, all who broke the law are under a curse. Thus, in confirming the covenant with Israel, in Deuteronomy 27:15–26, it repeats “Cursed be anyone…” 12 times, ending with these words, “Cursed be anyone who does not confirm the words of this law by doing them.” Thus Paul quotes those very words in Galatians 3:10, “For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, ‘Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.’”
It should be monumentally important, then, when Paul opens his letter to the Ephesians with the following words, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us.” We, who ought to live under the curse, have been blessed. And in blessing us, God is bringing us back to the beginning, back to the Garden, back to a perfect and blessed state.
In fact, that is the entire point of this first paragraph. All is driving towards verse 10: there was a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, to gather up all things under one great head, so that he might rule and subdue the whole world, bring everything into subjection of his righteous reign, and sum up all things in Christ. In short, all that was lost by Adam has been put under Christ, and thus all that was ruined by Adam is made new in Christ.
This is God’s plan. Renew the world. Restore the blessing. Overcome the curse. And this is where Paul starts in unfolding the glorious realities that surround the church. While he has not yet fully eradicated the curse from the world, in the church he has given a small sample of what that coming world will be. God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing.
How has God blessed us? That is largely what this first paragraph is about. In fact, this first paragraph (vv3–14) lays out all the panoply of the blessings of God given to us in Christ Jesus. And it does that according to the thrice repeated refrain, “to the praise of his glory.” And you’ll notice that in each case, the “praise of his glory” is attached to a different person of the Trinity.
· In verses 3–6, the Father blesses us by choosing us to the praise of his glorious grace.
· In verses 7–12, the Son blesses us through redeeming us by his blood and thereby giving us an inheritance, all to the praise of his glory.
· And in verses 13–14, the Spirit seals us and guarantees our possession of that inheritance, again to the praise of his glory.
And so you can see how Trinitarian Paul’s thought is. And how it covers the roles of each person of the Trinity as God works in salvation: The Father plans salvation, the Son accomplishes salvation, and the Spirit applies salvation. And as such, you can also see how the work of God to save us spans from eternity to eternity: The Father from eternity past working to save us, the Son in time working to save us, and the Spirit guaranteeing our future by working the save us.
Thus, Paul, as an expression of his own praise to God, as well as to draw our hearts into adoration of God, he systematically lays out all the blessings of God in this densely packed overture of praise. In fact, it is so densely packed that it is like a rich chocolate cake—you can only eat it in small bites lest it become overwhelming. And we will only look at two of those blessings this morning: election and predestination.
No skilled contractor sets out to build anything without a plan. No father intentionally leads his family without good solid forethought. No software engineer sits down at their computer and starts writing random code hoping that it will create the next supercomputer. There’s a plan. And, in fact, the greater the goal, the more the planning, and the greater the wisdom it takes to fit all the pieces together and accomplish that plan.
So also with God. With a grand goal to restore and redeem fallen humanity, God in eternity past devised a plan. It is a plan in which his Son, Jesus Christ, sits at the center, which would take centuries to unfold, with many facets and parts, all working together to establish Christ as the head of all things, rightful ruler of the world, deserving of the praise of a redeemed people who would bless him for the blessing he would pour out on them. As we talked about last week, Ephesians is all about the Church in God’s Program, the church as it fits into God’s plan of redemption for everything. And God’s plan of redemption begins back in eternity.
However, before we can talk about these blessings, we need to talk about what exactly these blessings are and where exactly they come from. So, to extend our introduction of these verses a bit longer than we normally would, let’s look at verse 3 briefly.
1. The Reason: God blesses us that we might bless him in return.
You’ll notice how this whole thing is one long string of praises. The whole opening 12 verses are a 202-word-long sentence of praise! And that teaches us something of the tone we should strike in talking about deep doctrinal issues. We should praise the Lord as we think about his glories. God has poured out his blessing on us, not just so we can sit there and soak in it like an Epsom salt bath, or so that we become Scrooge McDuck, but so that we might return that blessing to him in praises. That’s why throughout this whole section he repeats this reality. 1:6 – “to the praise of his glorious grace,” 1:12 – “to the praise of his glory” 1:14 – “to the praise of his glory.” All of this flows from God and then flows right back to him in praises. God pours out his blessings on his people so that his people might so overflow with joy that they would speak about it, praise him for it, and thank and honor him.
2. The Nature: We have been comprehensively blessed with spiritual blessings.
We have been comprehensively blessed. We have been blessed with the whole totality of spiritual blessing, the highest degree of spiritual blessing you can have, we have it. The greatest variety of spiritual blessing is ours.
Do we really have all that? Every spiritual benefit? Every single one? Then why do I feel all the time like a stranded seafarer on a desert island? As one commentator said, “The reason the believer does not receive spiritual benefits is not because God is in some way stingy and he or she must plead for them, but because believers are not appropriating by faith what God has already bestowed in their behalf.” Much of the reason we live in poverty is not because we’re poor, but because we fail to use our riches in Christ!
But we have to remember that those blessings are spiritual. We are a spiritual people, are we not? We are not a national people in the church, unlike Israel. Thus, our blessings are not material—at least not yet. We have been promised every material blessing as well! As Paul summarized in 1 Corinthians 3:21, “All things are yours.” But make no mistake, our blessings during this present age of the church are fundamentally spiritual in nature—that our God has chosen us, plans for us, makes us holy, adopts us into his family, redeems us, forgives us, reveals Christ and his glory to us, inherits us, opens our ears to heart the gospel, and gives us the Holy Spirit to empower and keep us.
3. The Locale: We have been blessed in a realm which is heavenly.
That is, the spiritual blessings we’ve received from God, we have received in the heavenly places. What is that? It’s the spiritual realm. It is the place of the activity of angels and the abode of God. It is the unseen realm which the Scripture consistently speaks about as “up there.” Paul uses this term a lot in Ephesians:
· Ephesians 2:6 – “…raised us up and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” – it’s where Jesus is right now, at the right hand of the father, interceding for us.
· Ephesians 3:10 – “…so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” Not only is it where Christ is now, but it is also where evil spiritual forces reside and are active. And it is by being joined to Christ and blessed in him that God is demonstrating to those evil spiritual forces in the spiritual realm how wise he is in undoing what they have wrought.
· Ephesians 6:12 – “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” And thus the substance of our war against them is to be found in Christ, not having a righteousness of our own, but coming from faith in Christ. We struggle against these heavenly forces by trusting in Christ and by living as his redeemed people.
4. The Union: All our blessings are due to our union with Christ.
But God will not bless us apart from a relationship with his Son. That is why it says that he has blessed us “in Christ.” There are many different metaphors that describe what it means to be united to Christ, but the one that Paul favors in Ephesians is that of a body. 1:23 – the church is “his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” In being joined to him we are also joined to each other like members of the body. Ephesians 2:16 – he has “reconciled us both to God in one body through the cross.” 3:6 – we are all “members of the same body.” And that body has been formed by the activity of the Holy Spirit, Eph 4:4 – “There is one body and one Spirit.” The same way that the whole body receives life and direction and protection and all that it has from the head, so also does the body of believers receive their life and direction and protection from Jesus Christ. All the blessings that belong to us only belong to us because we are connected with him and united with him. Therefore, Christ becomes the center of everything. That’s why throughout this whole letter Paul constantly says everything is “in Christ.”
TRANSITION: So verse 3 frames how we are to look at the blessings that come in verses 4-14. All our blessing flow from him and are meant to flow back to him. These are comprehensive and spiritual in nature. They are given to us in the heavenly places as God displays his wisdom to heavenly powers. They are given to us in Christ so that he might be the sum and head of everything. So, what are these blessings? We will talk about only 2 of them in the time remaining: Election and Predestination.
I. Election (v4)
The first spiritual blessing we have received is election. “Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him…” That is to say, the outpouring of his love began with a deliberate choice to set his love on a particular people.
Many people believe the doctrine of election to be a hard and stony thing. But to we who are chosen, it ought to be a sweet and delightful thing. What does election communicate? Love. My Great Grandpa’s name was Tom Benny. He once saw a group of girls walking along and saw a girl he particularly liked. Julia. And he said to himself, “I’m gonna marry her.” And so he asked her out. Her dad said no, she had to be 18 first. So, he showed up at her front door on her 18th birthday to ask her out. She said yes and eventually got married. That’s election.
Does a bridegroom not have a right to choose his bride? And when he chooses her, does he not set his love on her in a special way? Does he not love her in a way which is above and beyond all other women? In fact, in his love of her, he in one sense “hates” all other women, not in the sense that he’s emotionally revolted by them and desires their harm, but that his devotion to her is so intense that, by comparison, they are nothing to him. That is why we say in traditional vows, “Forsaking all others.”
Everyone would agree that it would be inappropriate for a husband to love all women the way he loves his wife. And everyone would agree that his bride should not want him to. And this does not cause offence to the bride! He chooses her and uniquely sets his love on her above all other women, and she delights in it. She does not become offended that he doesn’t love other women just like he loves her. She doesn’t criticize him for his unloving posture towards all other women. Rather, she delights in his love and presses into his love and even is jealous for his love.
The analogy, like all analogies, breaks down. But this is the kind of love that the Father has for us in Christ. Christ sets his love on us and sets us apart to be his bride, to love us above all others, to be committed to us beyond all other peoples. And in that sense, he forsakes all others. And in doing so, he does not suddenly revile all other sinners! He still holds out the promise that he would save them if they repent and believe! Yet, for his purposes he sets his love only on this people. And that should cause us no offence but should rather delight our hearts! As Wesley said, “Amazing love! How can it be that thou my God shouldst die for me!?” Let the wonder of that land on you! He chose us! That should lead us immediately to ask, “Why?” You were not worthy, but he chose you anyway.
And for those who do not believe, you cannot use this doctrine as an excuse to put off repentance and faith! You do not need to know if you are one of the elect to repent and believe, nor do I need to know in order to preach the message of salvation to you. Jesus’ command is clear: “Repent and believe in the gospel.” That is all that you need to know. Hear that call. Worry about the rest later. As George Whitefield said, “Let man go to the grammar school of faith and repentance before he goes to the university of election and predestination.”
That choice was due to our relationship to Christ. He chose use in him. This does not mean that God chose Christ and by consequence chose all those who choose Christ. That turns the doctrine on its head and runs against the very grammar of the text: He chose us. But the realm in which he chose us, the location of his choosing, was in Christ. We can’t fathom all that this means, but we can be confidence that God has always contemplated our salvation in relationship to Christ. Why? Because he contemplated the salvation of sinners! And if he chooses sinners, then they need to savior. Thus for him to choose us is for him to make that choice in Christ, the Savior.
His choice was before the foundation of the world. That is to say, before the beginning. Before we existed. Before he said “let there be light.” Which means that it was before we had done anything good or bad, before we existed to make a choice, to do a good deed, or to sin a sin.
What this means is that God’s choice was independent of any consideration of our works. Paul makes a similar point in Romans 9:10, “Rebekah had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God’s purpose in election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls—she was told, ‘the older will serve the younger.’” God is absolutely free in his gracious choice of a people. Nothing we did made him choose us because we hadn’t done it yet! Nothing we would do made him choose us, both because all we ever did since birth was sin (and he knew that) and because all we would ever do flowed from the counsel of his will! In other words, he didn’t choose us before the foundation of the world because of what we had done, but in spite of what we had done. That’s what makes it grace.
His choice of us was for the purpose of making us perfectly holy in his presence. He didn’t just choose us in a detached and uncaring manner. He chose us for a purpose—that we might be holy and blameless in his presence. He didn’t choose us to leave us who we were. He chose us to change us.
One of the great misunderstandings about election is that it creates laziness in Christian living. “Well, I’ve been chosen, right? So I can just sin and I’m good!” But this verse tears down that unholy thought. Being chosen by God makes holiness more urgent, because this is the very reason why he has chosen us! For holiness! We don’t reach that holiness here in this life fully, but we are nonetheless, “saints” (1:1) in Christ. We are joined to him and united to him, so God now sees us as holy and blameless even though we are not. But one day he will have perfected the change and have a holy and spotless bride that he will present to himself in splendor.
II. Predestination (v5–6)
Not only has God spiritually blessed us by choosing us, but he has also spiritually blessed us be making that choice a reality in predestination. It would stand to reason that if God specially set his love on a peculiar people in eternity past, that he would guarantee their salvation by planning to make it happen.
This is the meaning of the word “proorizo.” It comes from the word “horizon,” and has less to do with deciding things for you and more to do with demarcating a particular path. In other words, by choosing you, in eternity past, God has determined your destination—your ending point. That is, he has determined that you will be “holy and blameless before him.” But in order to make that happen, there are a whole bunch of steps that need to happen between now and then. Which means he also as planned those steps as well. And all of it weaves together into a beautiful tapestry of wisdom.
We know this is true. How many of you end up where you thought you would be? And how many times have we looked back at our lives and thought, “There was a purpose in all this”? Think back on your life. Would you have been saved without meeting the right person at the right time? Or being born into a particular family? Would you know Christ if you were born in a different country? Would you follow him if you hadn’t lost that person at that crucial moment in your life? Would you know him as you do now without the suffering that he’s brought in your life?
That is what Paul means by predestined. That is what he means when he says “he predestined us for adoption.” If he determined the end, then so also has he determined every step to get there. Those whom he chose in eternity, he brings to adoption by predestining a course for their lives. Election is the who, predestination is the how. And thus, we are born into the family we are, having the relationships we do, our hearts are prepared in his providence to hear the gospel, and in his timing, behold, Joe Christian shows up at just the right time to communicate the gospel to you, and God sends his Spirit into your heart and gives you new life and joins you to his Son and adopts you into his family.
He oversees every detail! God is very detail oriented. He not only knows the big picture, but he also is a master planner. This should lead us to marvel at his wisdom. It is far more complicated than we can fathom! Paul, contemplating the unfolding of God’s plan, was led to exclaim in Romans 11:33, “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” As Paul will say in just a few verses, his grace he has “lavished on us in all wisdom and insight.” (Eph 1:8).
This in no way takes our choice away! In fact, it establishes them as meaningful. It simply says that our choices which we make according to our creaturely wills inevitably lead to fulfilling his plan. Consider the example of Satan attacking Job. Satan made choices. Job made choices. But what did those choices come to? Demonstrating to Satan that God can keep Job, and demonstrating to Job that God is right even if we don’t understand how. And that’s exactly what God wanted to do from the beginning. It’s a both/and, not an either/or.
And don’t forget that little phrase “to himself.” He’s personally invested in all this! He doesn’t just do this for his Son, Jesus Christ. Father does this for himself! He desires to bring you into his family, to be a Father to you. Adoption was considered by the puritans to be the most precious doctrine in all the Bible. To be brought into the family of God to experience the love of the Father is an incredible thing. It is a couch for our refreshment.
His predestination is according to the purpose of his will. And what is the purpose of his will? That is a deep question which, in one sense, has no answer. Yet we do get some glimpses into what God’s purposes are. V9: “making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him.” Again, v11: to obtain an inheritance, “having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.” And all of that is that we might be “to the praise of his glory.” His planning work accomplishes in reality the establishing of Christ as the head of all things, the creation of a people for his own inheritance, and the redounding of his praises for all eternity by those blessed people.
And all of this is “to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.” Why did God do all this? That we should praise him. Listen to how Paul puts it in 2 Thess. 1:11–12—“To this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Why does God do what he does? To lead you to praise him. And does that mean God’s an egomaniac? Some sort of praise hungry, insecure abomination? Of course not! He does it because 1) he is worthy of it, and because 2) you are most fulfilled when you praise him. He’s only doing what’s good for us. If he leads us to praise him, it is because he loves us.
Conclusion
So, the first two spiritual blessings that Paul enumerates are election and predestination. And it is so glorious that our tiny little brains can’t handle it. He chose us for holiness and perfection in his presence by uniting us to his Son before the world began and he saw that his choice would become a reality by predestining us for adoption unto himself. He has ensured our salvation.
A concluding thought: If he was this committed to you before you existed, how much more will he remain committed to you through eternity! Tom and Julia Benny’s beginning was sweet, and their life only got sweeter. Just not in the way we would have expected. The last 20 years of Great Grandma Julia’s life were spent in a wheelchair. They shot her spine with silver as a rheumatoid arthritis treatment. It caused her spine to collapse at the neck. She became a quadriplegic. Her head was screwed into a striker frame so she could sit upright. She couldn’t go to the bathroom by herself. She lived in absolute dependence on those around her, and especially her husband.
He never flinched. Not even once did he show an ounce of regret. He chose her at the start and chose her every day after. He patiently cared for her. Visited her every single day. Never took vacations. Never did anything if he couldn’t bring her along. That is electing love. There before the start. There at the right time. There through the end.